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20 INFRASTRUCTURE AUSTRALIA APRIL 2013
Resilience
Computing infrastructure resilience
by David Singleton
ENGINEERS SHOULD RECOGNISE the fact that we must
design, construct and manage our infrastructure systems to be
more resilient. As engineers and planners, we must now ask
ourselves: "What types of events might we face in the future?
What types of events should our infrastructure be designed
for?" ese events may include: earthquakes, bush res,
drought, tropical cyclones, rising sea levels, storm surges, and
oods. We can no longer predict with certainty how severe
and how frequent those events will be?
Under such circumstances it appears that we may no longer
be able to design and construct in an a ordable framework
to fully resist such future events using a traditional "factor of
safety" approach. We need a way to develop infrastructure
designs and coordinate infrastructure systems in order to
achieve the most resilient outcome for investment that is
warranted economically. e next wave of infrastructure cost
bene t analysis must be capable of addressing alternative
investments in resilience.
So how can we compare alternative design solutions to
assess how they would contribute to a resilient system?
ere are several infrastructure sustainability rating
tools available: the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of
Australia s (ISCA) IS tool is one. Rating tools not only provide
a way to determine an infrastructure asset s sustainability, they
also enable comparison of the sustainability of di erent assets,
or of di erent design solutions for a single asset. And while the
principal use for these tools is to determine the asset s rating,
they can also be used -- informally -- in "design" mode.
While the tools do not directly address asset resilience in
their current formats, they do give some indications. In design
mode, the performance of those characteristics that a ect
the resilience of the asset can be tested and the comparative
resilience outcomes identi ed. It should then be possible to
select a design with a reasonable knowledge of its resilience
characteristics.
Using ratings tools to understand resilience is an important
area for the development of infrastructure sustainability tools.
Signi cant progress will be made in this direction over the
next few years, as ratings organisations (such as ISCA) and
universities develop the means to measure infrastructure
resilience. ese will provide a positive statement about the
advantages of sustainability thinking in understanding the
resilience of our infrastructure and help us to design, construct
and manage our infrastructure systems to be more resilient.
David Singleton is director of global planning practice, Arup,
and chair of the ISCA.